Question of the Day - 11 February 2021

Terrible's does, at first glance, seem like a, er, terrible handle for a brand of gas stations and casinos. But it's also a legendary name in Las Vegas; it's so familiar that few people who’ve been around for any length of time give it a second thought.

The story starts in Chicago in the 1930s, when one Ed Herbst bought a gas station. A marketer at heart, Herbst, who's been called the "P.T. Barnum of Gasoline," soon realized what a cutthroat business he’d entered and that his station had to stand out to be successful. He subsequently used every trick in the book to gain market share. He held giveaways with a fill-up, such as flowers for the ladies and sodas for the kiddies; for the menfolk, he hired teenage girls to pump gas. Everyone got bubblegum. He offered free pony rides behind his station and sold beer, cigarettes, and magazines inside. Ed Herbst is credited with establishing the full-service gas station, as opposed to just the ordinary run-of-the-mill gas station.

Most importantly, he was admittedly shameless in cutting his gasoline profit margin to the bone and making it up in volume and inside sales. He recognized that car owners would drive miles out of their way to save a nickel on a gallon of gas, then head inside and pay through the nose for marked-up convenience goods.

In the late 1940s, Ed Herbst packed up his family and moved west, opening a chain of Herbst service stations as he went and undercutting the competition so severely that he wound up with an unsavory reputation. The story goes that when he applied for a business license in Cheyenne, Wyoming, one of the city counselors, who happened to own a gas station, exclaimed, "If we let that terrible Herbst in, we'll all go under!"

When Ed heard the words "terrible Herbst," he thought that would be a, er, wonderful name for his empire.

The Herbsts settled in southern Nevada, where the big signs above Terrible Herbst service stations tickled newcomers. This writer once brought a girlfriend to Las Vegas for the first time, who got such a kick out of the name that she adopted it as a synonym for a hangover. "I had so much to drink last night that this morning, I have a terrible herbst!"

Along the way, the Herbst was dropped in favor of just plain Terrible's, which is symbolized by the familiar "Bad Guy" cowboy logo.